Saturday, March 2, 2019

TESLA MODEL 3 - A RALLY CAR? COULD BE

As the hype for the public launch and, finally, deliveries of Tesla’s new Model 3 gather pace, and the Tesla executives ramp up the hyperbole associated with anything Tesla, comes a story from New England that the Model 3 may make a great rally car. Really?

A couple of photos and a video emerged on YouTube showing some maniac drifting a Tesla Model 3 around a closed Rally School course right after a blizzard dumped three feet of snow.

Okay, these are the sort of photos you’ve seen many times, showing cars launching rooster-tails of snow behind them as they drift around the track, but what interested me more was the ‘maniac’ behind the wheel.

The young man is a motoring scribe named Ezra Dyer. I first met him in 2004 after a phone call from his Boston home, and he opened the conversation with: “I’m going to be a motoring writer, and would you loan me a Bentley Continental GT coupe?”

Now, any sensible and orthodox-thinking PR man would probably say ‘No’ at this stage, but I have been gambling on what I believe is innovative creative writing talent for all of my 40 years as an automotive PR executive, so, needless to say, I said: “Yes, I would”. Our conversation was funny, irreverent and original, and I very much enjoyed our repartee. Of course he was a candidate, which fitted my image of a budding writer, with skill woven through just his conversation.

Ezra wrote a funny, irreverent and entertaining story about the Bentley for AUTOMOBILE magazine, and I called my friend, the editor, the late, great David E. Davis Jnr, and asked him: “You must have liked the piece, or you wouldn’t have run it? I’m the person responsible for admitting Ezra into the halls of great automotive story-tellers.”

David E. replied: “I know, he was really grateful you took a chance on him, when many would not have. Thanks, I think we owe you one.”

Ezra now writes for a range of magazine and online outlets and his style remains funny, irreverent and clever.